Tiger in a Trance

So, I actually know the author Max Luddington, and at times we ran in the same circles during the Grateful Dead days. While a lot of the characters in his book are fictional, there are a few who are based on real people who we both knew. The others could have easily been people who we knew. Max did an amazing job of capturing the spontaneity of life living on the road following the Grateful Dead, the community, and how many of us transitioned from psychedelics into using harder drugs. It was fun and sometimes very painful reading this book as it brought back a lot of memories of the life I used to live that was amazing and full of light at times, but also skirted life and death and became much darker in the end. I am not sure how Max was able to remember so many details as this life is very foggy to me, but he did so with a very rich writing style. While I had a specific reason for reading this book, I do think that other readers who have a passion for music and enjoy learning about interesting subcultures would find this book a very interesting read.

Max Ludington has written a remarkable book in "Tiger in a Trance," his insiders look into the cult of the Grateful Dead. There are lines that stopped me cold in this book, such as in the scene where the protagonist, Jason, has just administered a hit of killer dope and immediately makes for the toilet. "I read the legend inscribed at the top of the porcelain bowl: American Standard. I nodded my head, feeling, as LSD had taught me sometimes to feel, that wisdom was being imparted to me in ways I was only occasionally aware of." One gets the feeling of what it was to be "on tour" during the mid `80s with the Dead. The drab sameness of American cities, the phenomena of a Hartford or a Worcester being transformed into a special place for the two days the Dead were in town, then returning to its mundane 9 to 5 existence. Ludington successfully renders the time and place perfectly in this book as he, quite believably, traces Jason's descent from rather privileged Deadhead lifestyle into serious drug use and the dangers that lifestyle entails. When Jason loses his pal Randy (who made their way through the tours selling t-shirts), he loses his moral compass - a point that is made clear late in the book when Jason remembers driving with Randy years before, heading to another Dead show at Alpine Valley, when a perfectly rendered bluegrass gospel song comes on the radio: "We listened not looking at each other, trying to contain the charge arcing between the music and the green triumph of the Iowa summer. We didn't talk about it afterward. The song ended and Randy shut off the radio, and we let it dissipate for a few miles." I saw the Dead a number of times during the years Ludington describes and I can readily attest to the changes in the scene as the years went by, such as when "Touch of Grey" became so big and brought with it a lot of newcomers - I experienced this up in Maine at the Oxford Speedway shows - and the disappointing (to Deadheads, anyway) Dylan/Dead series of concerts. I never went `on tour' and only saw the Dead when they came my way (and never after Brent died) - so "Tiger in a Trance" gave me a good idea as to what was going on in the lives of all these people that I would see, that seemed to have found something in life worth getting excited about - no small feat in the America of the `80s. What I was hoping for in this book, and did not quite get, was some examination of why the music of the Grateful Dead was able to take over the lives of so many people - why no other band had ever inspired people to changes their lives. I think I found the answer in a book on an entirely different topic when I read the following passage and the Deadheads I mixed with immediately came to mind: "Attended by a motley crew of men and women who were shockingly ordinary, unremarkable for intellectual acumen, social grace, wit or quickness..." This description of first followers of Jesus, written by Donald Spoto in his book "The Hidden Life of

It's a first novel, with many of the characteristics of such books--a fascination with late adolescence, a romanticization of young infatuation and sexuality, a desire to provide a cautionary tale. Ludington isn't the real thing--yet. His plot is far from original, and the characters don't really live; many of the names pass through, like faces you might see at a Dead show, identifiable only by one major quirk (she's one-armed, he's from Philly, he shoots heroin). I suspect Ludington wanted to capture the swirl of people that buzzed around "tour." Pynchon's short story "Entropy" achieves this effect in a more condensed fashion. Where the novel is good, though, is where it looks to its models (Whitman and Kerouac, especially). Ludington has a nice ability to get lyrical about landscape, about experience, even about drug highs. I'd like to see a more interior novel from him eventually; this would play to his strengths. It's a road novel, and though the road part of it gets old (except for Deadheads, perhaps, who might be able to nod knowingly at the names of civic arenas) the narration of the experience of being on the road is appealing.Ultimately, this novel is quite promising but rarely transcends that. It bears the earnestness of privileged twenty-year-olds memorializing their dabbling with the dangerous side of life. I suspect Ludington has a very good novel in him, but like Franzen's or Lethem's or Chabon's earlier books (THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CITY or MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN or MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH) this feels like a personal story, grounded in a personal place, that he needs to get out before he can get on with the business of writing his real "Great American Novel."

If you are looking for a nostalgic rehash of Dead tour as a pure, utopic, mythical experience, this may not be the book for you. Let's just get that fact out of the way so that you won't be dissapointed when you open this novel and find the complex, multifaceted and realistic portrayal of the Grateful Dead scene that serves as the backdrop to this story. The primary reason to read this book is for the characters. Melanie, the brassy one-armed runaway, is unique to the world of fiction, and counters Jason's charming naivety and wide-eyed trust in fate with her cunning and wit. Also serving as a foil to Jason is the ever-hacking Harry, who beneath the surly quips and malcontented one-liners is a generous and complicated man who never quite figured out what to do with himself, but left an interesting past trying. This novel explores the issues of loyalty and dependence among characters who are living in a universe in which there is no reliable moral yardstick, but who manage to maintain their sense of humanity regardless.

This is one of the best novels I have read about drugs and youth. Come to think of it, it is one of the best novels I have read period. Not only does the author have a beautiful command of the poetic possibilities of prose, but his characters and scenes are so finely etched that they burn in the imagination. The material that takes place at Dead shows is wonderfully handled; beautifully written and unsentimental. The second half of the book takes a dark turn but it is fully realized and totally satisfying. Once I picked it up I could not put this book down. There is a sense of strangeness and mystery in this novel (especially in the last half) that only the best writers can capture. I highly recomend this book to anyone interested in compulsively readable serious literature.